A change.org petion has been set up by non-urban land owners frustrated that they are obliged to continue to pay rates on blocks of land for which no services are provided and on which they cannot build. In some cases, they cannot even access their land thanks to the poor state of the non-urban roads. Council has, over the years, become the owner of hundreds of these lots as other owners have given up in despair.
Between 1919 and 1922, Stroud Council had approved subdivisions involving many thousands of lots around the North Arm Cove peninsular and Pindimar. The vision at the time was that Port Stephens would soon become a major naval and exporting port. Government decisions and then the depression put a stop to that but the "paper subdivisions" remained.
The then Stroud Shire Council defined the North Arm Cove village boundaries way back in the 1960s and has subsequently rejected or deferred consideration of any changes.
In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, new developers acquired those subdivisions and undertook major sales campaigns. Many people bought believing assurances that the land would soon be rezoned.
There is no plan to rezone Non-urban land for urban purposes in the above area. This is reflected in the Tea Gardens/ Hawks Nest Conservation and Development Strategy (2003) adopted by Great Lakes Council and the State Government’s Mid-North Coast Regional Strategy (2009).
The petition may be found at: https://www.change.org/p/great-lakes-council-great-lakes-non-urban-land-owners-want-to-build-we-have-waited-long-enough
